


Inferno

by amoama



Category: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
Genre: F/F, Female Faustus, Female Mephistopheles, Hell, Nor am I out of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 21:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18039221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: The prompt was inferno and that's where we find Faustus.





	Inferno

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the genderswapped 2018/19 production at the Sam Wanamaker theatre: https://blog.shakespearesglobe.com/post/180887775138/doctor-faustus-on-stage-in-the-sam-wanamaker

Faustus is falling through a fiery pit; the heat of the inferno suffocates her, it’s tongues lash at her legs and breasts and back, it’s smoke scorches her throat; and still she screams. She doesn’t scream for God, forgiveness is all too clearly far beyond her. She has debts and all she can do is beg the devil’s bailiff for a reprieve. 

“Mephistopheles,” she screams, she doesn’t think she could scream anything else. Her partner these 24 years, “Mephistopheles,” is all she knows to ask for. 

Mephistopheles appears, Faustus feels her presence, feels her pleasure, all at Faustus’s expense, her wild, corrupted delight. Her earthly sheen is shed, her eyes pierce through the flames, dread and dangerous, her skin is a red, livid thing, forged here in this very fire. Just seeing the difference in her, Faustus knows there will be no reprieve. 

“There is no escape,” Mephistopheles tells her, “I am always burning, even when I was serving you, I burnt.” 

“You warned me and I believed I knew better,” Faustus says, “You must have hated me.” 

“It was not hate,” Mephistopheles tells her, “It was disdain. You were so tedious in your choices, in your arrogance and self-serving nature. Your inquiring mind took you so far and no further, it led you to despair.” 

“Everything we did together,” Faustus begins.

“I have done a thousand times before, will do a thousand times again,” Mephistopheles asserts, “There are many Popes to humiliate, many nobles to hoodwink, many academics to impress with tricks and spells and clever words. How cheaply you sold yourself, how easily you were corrupted.” 

Faustus is scorched by her words along with the flames, Mephistopheles cackles, her laugh merging with the crackling flames, a heartless crowing that feeds her despair. That the answer to all her questioning could be this nothing, this timeless, ceaseless, continuation, this emptiness everlasting. There is nothing, but not the nothing she had believed in, instead, there is simply this burning, raging, heedless pain that it is impossible to see beyond. 

“You can step out of the flames,” Mephistopheles tells her, “they will always be with you.” 

Faustus takes Mephistopheles’ hand, for whatever reason it is offered, it is companionship, and it is perhaps, almost, something. She is led away, aimless into the abyss, still screaming.


End file.
